Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute tells the Christian Science Monitor that former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee ?very explicitly is setting out to be a political answer to the unions.? Rhee herself was on CNN this morning (at 4:40 a.m. her time!) to discuss her new advocacy group, Students First, one purpose of which, she said, is to ?break up the monolithic teacher voice??i.e., to separate the opinions of actual teachers from the institutional opinions of their unions. Rhee?noted that she is willing and ready to engage in conflict with those who advance educational ideas that she finds disagreeable. Oh, and she also said that her new group ?is not about a war with the teachers' union? but ?about fighting for kids.? So, then, remove the phrase ?very explicitly? from Hess's comment and you have the truth.
An aside: Rhee said on CNN that ?we're really in a crisis right now, in America, as it pertains to public education,? to which her interviewer responded, ?No question.? Not everything is a crisis. Crises, for example, do not typically persevere decade after decade, with the public reapprised of their existence every now and then by reports and op-eds and TV talking heads. Perhaps one of the first things we could fix in education policy is the lazy language that accompanies it.
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow